Pluralism lives

Lutyens’ liberals and sundry “sickular” analysts have been dumbfounded by the election results that handed Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) an unanticipated majority in the Lok Sabha. The elite intellectual discourse since then has eddied around the xenophobic and communal content of the campaign, which appears to have trumped the myriad non-achievements of Mr Modi’s 2014 promises. So should we pronounce the funeral oration for plural, inclusive India? 

The past five years offer clues to why the answer can as well be no. 

Critics of Mr Modi have attributed his almost single-handed victory to his undoubted charisma, money power, youthful muscle power and a command over the national broadcasting apparatus. All these advantages multiplied from 2014 onwards — in fact, Mr Modi’s All India Radio talk show Mann Ki Baat was considered a potent electoral tool. Yet his party lost eight seats in Lok Sabha bypolls and several key state elections in the past five years. In the 20-odd Assembly polls since then, non-BJP parties won almost as often as the BJP, though the exigencies of power politics induced two of them to tie up subsequently with the saffron party and the party broke ground in the north-east. 

For evidence recall: The Assembly elections of Delhi and Bihar (2015), Odisha (in 2014 and 2019), West Bengal (in 2016) and the Big Three of 2018 in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the UP Assembly by-elections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur in 2018. 

The Hindutva tide was no weaker then than it is today. But all of these wins came on the back of down-to-earth bread-and-butter issues: Delhi on providing bijli, paani, schools and health to the urban poor, Bihar and Odisha on development, West Bengal on protecting land rights (until Mamata Banerjee inexplicably opted for communal appeasement), and Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan on widespread farmer unrest, to offer some examples.  

Mr Modi’s 2014 majority owed much to the non-casteist, job-creating development plank on which he campaigned convincingly and energetically. His vision of a red-tape— and corruption-free India, of efficient administration with plentiful jobs and a fast-growing economy — a stark contrast to the tired, venal alliance in power — encouraged many voters steeped in India’s foundational values to press the button next to the lotus symbol. 

Thus, presented with an energetic, credible competing vision of progress that is not necessarily predicated on religion and nationalism, it is just as possible for electorates to respond positively. It is easy to forget now that at the start of 2019, Mr Modi’s poor performance on the economic front had raised prospect of a comeback but with a significantly reduced number of seats. That the Congress was unable to offer voters a credible nationwide alternative vision at all had as much to do with the oblique nature of its campaign when compared with Mr Modi and Amit Shah subliminal messaging. 

Rahul Gandhi’s distance from the aam aadmi way of thinking caused him to focus on issues that have little resonance for them. Whether Mr Modi made money on the Rafale deal (especially when there was no evidence of this) is irrelevant when livelihoods are at stake. Mr Gandhi’s mawkish big message of Love (as against the BJP’s hate campaign, in case you missed the memo) made no sense at all. Ill-conceived warnings of Muslims being killed en-masse if the BJP came to power even as the Congress offered soft Hindutva imagery via multiple temple visits only confused the signals for the average voter. Although it is possible to debate the wisdom or otherwise of the income support programme NYAY, it came far too late and was poorly propagated. The irony is that the Congress has an entrenched grassroots organisation and capable state satraps that Mr Gandhi did not leverage judiciously. His performance has only served to validate Mr Modi’s sneers at the inadequate “dynast”.

In contrast, Messrs Modi and Shah had something Mr Gandhi, two decades younger, lacked: the zealots’ vitality to mobilise the people and craft a narrative that is guaranteed to resonate when times are bad. Generating fear of an inchoate Other — Pakistan, Islamic terrorists, issues that it single-handedly revived in Jammu & Kashmir after a decade of relative peace — is a handy alibi when an economy stagnates and foreign investors seek other pastures. Mr Modi’s detractors compare him with Indira Gandhi in his authoritarianism and disregard for institutions and constitutional norms. His regime’s similarities with West Bengal’s defunct Left Front are also striking. Just as the Left Front’s success with land redistribution rooted its three decades in power, the initial triumphs of schemes such as Jan Dhan and Ujjwala exposed the aam aadmi  outside Gujarat to Mr Modi’s capabilities. Just as the Left Front found a useful recruiting base among unemployed youth — the result of its own anti-industry policies — record youth unemployment provided Mr Modi with a large cohort of political foot soldiers. 

Mr Modi, in permanent campaign mode, is planning his strategies for various elections in 2020. Time for his secular opponents to get their act together asap, you would think.